“The planet is on a tightrope.” This is the message that a Greenpeace activist displayed on a ribbon suspended 30 meters high between two buildings in the heart of Madrid. Its goal is to highlight its demand for “climate justice” on the occasion of the start of the COP30 climate summit on Monday in Belém, the heart of the Brazilian Amazon, and to warn that the event represents “a unique opportunity to stop deforestation and demand climate justice in a crucial decade.”
The activist walked early Monday morning between two buildings in Plaza España, on the corner of Princesa Street, 30 meters high and on a strip of fabric. Highline Its length is 55 meters. “The tightrope walk symbolizes the urgent need to move forward steadily and not fail to take consistent steps in the right direction,” they explained from Greenpeace, which also states that the government of Spain must lead “an ambitious and courageous stance at this COP, without succumbing to the false steps of the EU’s climate backwardness or the global denial of leaders like Donald Trump, which could plunge the planet into the abyss of climate change.”
With this unprecedented action, Greenpeace will warn governments gathered in Brazil and demand “end dates for coal, gas and oil, new taxes on the fossil industry and a plan to end deforestation before 2030.” “Although the planet is in a fragile ecological balance and warning signs are accumulating in the form of damage, floods, heatwaves and other extreme events, we have the tools to avoid the worst-case scenarios,” Eva Saldaña, Executive Director of Greenpeace Spain and Portugal, told EFE.
Saldaña, who will be present at the UN Climate Change Conference, insisted that “all we need is the political will and international cooperation to put the protection of life before private economic interests,” which is why “the UN Climate Change Conference represents a key opportunity to courageously stop this global environmental crisis.”
In the case of Spain, Greenpeace points out that it is impossible to forget the impacts of some extreme weather events exacerbated by climate change that have had a devastating impact on populations, livelihoods and ecosystems. For example, the dramatic Dana of 2024 or the spate of wildfires this summer. They explain: “We are trying not to lose balance and to have hope, but the political class, instead of increasing climate action, is now taking slower, more ambiguous and more hesitant steps.”
The environmental organization stressed in a statement that the 30th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which will be held until November 21, 2025 in Belém, reaches “a decisive moment for global climate action.”
In this sense, they point out that ten years after the approval of the Paris Agreement, under which countries committed to preventing global warming from exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius, this is “the first COP since average global temperatures exceeded this physical limit in 2024, an alarming indicator of the acceleration of the climate crisis.” “The world is in the middle of what the scientific community has described as a critical decade in the face of the climate emergency. It is urgent that world leaders improve the climate plans presented at COP30 in Belém,” Greenpeace reiterates, also warning against existing commitments.
In this way, they ensure that even if they meet existing commitments, global warming is heading towards an alarming increase of between 2.3°C and 2.5°C, figures that are a far cry from the 1.5°C limit set by the Paris Agreement, which is why they consider “ending the use of fossil fuels” an essential step.
The environmental group also sent its main demands to the 30th session of the Conference of the Parties, in particular demanding “a global response plan to address the ambition gap that separates what governments are doing and what they should do to limit global warming to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius.”
Therefore, they call for an acceleration of emissions reductions, especially in key sectors such as energy (including the transition away from fossil fuels), agriculture, forestry and land use, in line with the principles of equity, justice and a just transition.
They also call for a new five-year forest action plan under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to “halt and reverse deforestation and forest degradation by 2030.”
Finally, they call for the creation of a new permanent item on the COP30 agenda, to “increase international public financing that the Global North must provide, and strengthen taxes on a ‘polluter pays’ basis to unlock greater public financing for the Global South.”
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